PARKER — The clear waters of the Colorado River flow gently through the Headgate Rock diversion dam while boaters and Jet Skiers play upstream in front of the Blue Water Resort and Casino.

The dam quietly siphons off almost one fourth of Arizona’s share of Colorado River water and sends it to nearby fields of alfalfa and cotton on the reservation of the Colorado River Indian Tribes.

The 4,500 people of the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Navajo and Hopi tribes who belong to the Colorado River Indian Tribes, or CRIT, are hoping to profit by leasing some of that water to the rest of Arizona for the first time.

The plan is filled with complications, legal and logistical.

Moving the water from the river to other locations would require costly new infrastructure and cooperation among several water management agencies.

But the amount of water is significant enough to help settle water issues across the state, from Tusayan on the rim of the Grand Canyon south to Sierra Vista. And Arizona’s growing population is making the tribes' water more valuable by the day.

Water from the Colorado River is diverted to the Colorado River Indian Tribes' canals in Parker.(Photo: Michael Chow/The Republic)

The tribes use a 75-year-old canal system that wastes vast quantities of water. But the tribes have been working with Salt River Project on how they might plug some of the leaks in the canals and send the conserved water to Phoenix and beyond.

“People don’t realize the amount of water we are talking about,” says Dennis Patch, chairman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, as he and visitors to the reservation rumble down a dirt road along the river’s edge.

Thousands of hay bales line the road as farmers prepare for one of the last cuttings of the season before winter slows the crops' growth. White egrets and blue herons line the myriad canals across the reservation, and water seeps from the fields into large puddles along the road.

The tribal water rights are significant because Supreme Court decisions on how to divvy up the river have been based on how many acres can be irrigated with the water. With more than 100,000 acres of farmland along the river, the Colorado River Indian Tribes were allotted 662,000 acre-feet of water for Arizona land and another 57,000 acre-feet for the California portion of the reservation.

“People don’t realize the amount of water we are talking about.”

Dennis Patch, chairman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes

An acre-foot would cover one acre a foot deep and is about how much water two Southwest households use in a year. The tribes' share of the river could provide drinking water for more than 2 million people were it used for that purpose.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes' entitlement is about 24 percent of the 2.8 million acre-feet Arizona is allotted annually from the river, and it is more than double the 300,000 annual acre-feet of the river Nevada is allotted.

Arizona is expected to end 2017 with more than 7 million residents and add another 2 million in the next 25 years or so.

“That’s 2 million more mouths that need water,” Patch said.

There are few options for supplying those new residents with water other than increased conservation and pumping groundwater, which water planners try to limit to ensure its availability if there is a shortage on the Colorado and Salt rivers.

Tapping into the tribes' water not only could reduce groundwater pumping but it could allow for the development of areas near metro Phoenix, such as the Superstition Vistas east of Apache Junction.

But plans to move the water have ignited controversy. An early proposal would have allowed a California entity to buy some of the tribes' allotment, and debate over that detail sidelined a larger deal to move water off the reservation.

Moving water off the remote reservation would require state and federal approval, but despite the obstacles, water officials believe the idea has merit.

A reliable source in a drought

In 2014, tribal officials began informal conversations with SRP on how the tribes might make better use of their substantial resources. Those talks evolved into confidential negotiations, eventually including the state Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, which brings river water to Phoenix and Tucson via the Central Arizona Project Canal.

Officials believe the tribes could provide 150,000 acre-feet of water annually for off-reservation uses.

The CAP and possibly new canals could be used to get the tribes' water to places such as Prescott and Sierra Vista, where water supplies are short and groundwater pumping threatens to deplete aquifers, said Dave Roberts, SRP associate general manager of water resources.

“The supply of water is probably the most significant beyond the CAP we have a chance to use within the state,” Roberts said. “When you actually think about it, CRIT’s water is a supply bridge between now and if we can do something eventually involving desalination, whether in Mexico, California or who knows.”

Chairman Dennis Patch of the Colorado River Indian Tribes stands next to a return flow structure on the Colorado River Reservation in western Arizona. Patch is looking at ways to be more efficient with the tribes' water and not return as much to the Colorado River.(Photo: Michael Chow/The Republic)

Not only are the water rights substantial, but they give the tribes a priority in a drought when other water users are forced to reduce their draw on the Colorado.

The perk is important. Water planners believe that the amount of water the states are allowed to divert from the Colorado is more water than the river actually will provide on average each year.

“Lake Powell and Lake Mead have to be dry before they don’t get water,” Roberts said.

Roberts said several areas of the state will see growth limited because of a lack of water if a new supply isn’t found, and that many of those places already threaten groundwater supplies with overpumping.

“Buckeye, Apache Junction and Queen Creek will need some supply in the future,” he said.

Some areas that could use the water, such as the Prescott region, would need new pipelines or canals to get water, he said.

“The federal government would potentially have an interest in building such a pipeline,” he said, adding that President Donald Trump has emphasized the need for new infrastructure.

After recent negotiations regarding the tribes' water, Patch was invited to private meetings this summer with state water officials convened by the governor. Those meetings are expected to result in proposed legislation regarding how water decisions in the state are made. The Gila River Indian Community also was invited, and Patch said he was grateful to have a seat at the table.

“We wanted to be the one to offer a bigger solution for Arizona,” Patch said. “We got to meet a lot of entities. There is a lot of need out there. If we can make our people happy and help Arizona, that’s great for us.”

The tribes still are considering options.

“We have not made any decisions,” Patch said. “We’ll just see where it goes from here.”

Farming culture

While the tribes want to see the water put to more efficient use, Patch makes clear that the Colorado River Indian Tribes' farming culture is a top priority.

Patch’s father was a farmer, and Patch recalls picking melons as a child growing up on the reservation. The tribes hope to increase the efficiency of the farms and expand cropland as part of any deal to transfer water.

The tribes have 70,000 acres of land under production today and could increase that to 99,000 acres, Patch said. The tribes farm some of their own land and lease much of it to others.

A worker straps down bales of alfalfa on the Colorado River Reservation near Poston in western Arizona.(Photo: Michael Chow/The Republic)

Most of the 11,000 acres farmed by the tribes produce alfalfa for California dairies, while the land leased to other farmers provides crops shipped as far away as China, Patch said.

The tribes could significantly improve the efficiency of the farms by switching irrigation methods and by growing fewer water-intensive crops, Patch said, citing studies the tribes commissioned on improving their irrigation practices.

The system is only about 50 percent efficient, and officials believe they can get it to better than 70 percent.

The farmland is built on a slope, and once the fields are soaked, the excess water flows downhill into collection canals that return it to the Colorado River.

Patch gets out of the Suburban and approaches a large, unlined canal, big enough to float a small canoe.

But this isn’t an irrigation canal. It’s essentially wasted water leaking from the system at a place where pressure is used to push water up one of the smaller lateral canals. This particular lateral leaks thousands of acre-feet of water a year, returning what doesn’t evaporate or seep into the ground to the river.

Because of the inefficiency in the canal system, the tribes need to divert almost their full Arizona allocation of river water just to irrigate the 70,000 acres of Arizona farmland today. The tribes have the right to irrigate 99,000 acres in the state but can't do that today because the system wastes so much water.

The tribes would be able to increase their farming acres, and make some water available for use off the reservation, if they can recapture some of the wasted water. Other water can be saved by lining dirt canals and planting water-efficient crops.

“If we fix this, we’ll have a lot of water,” Patch said. “It’s a major problem.”

Controversy in the details

Initially, SRP officials thought they might have to let the tribes convey some of their Arizona water to Southern California to make the plan pencil out financially. That idea drew fierce opposition and stalled negotiations for the past year.

Although the idea is off the table for now, some water experts say interstate water deals are almost inevitable in the future.

Water flows toward alfalfa fields on the Colorado River Reservation in western Arizona. The Colorado River Indian Tribes receive about 24 percent of Arizona's river water allotment.(Photo: Michael Chow/The Republic)

Tribal attorney Margaret Vick said the tribes approached state officials and the people who run CAP but didn’t get any ideas on how to move their water off the reservation. Then they approached SRP.

“When we asked the same question we asked of everyone else, SRP had a plan,” Vick said. “They have the technical expertise. They have the political connections. They understand Indian water rights.”

States along the Colorado River all are apportioned a specific share of its water, and the states historically have fought intensely to preserve their portion.

Officials who have been part of the SRP-tribal proposal have sought to keep the overall deal confidential, and they recognized early on that public perception of the portion of the deal where Arizona water would go to California would be a significant political hurdle.

After considering the interstate deal for at least a year, the Arizona Department of Water Resources, which reports to the governor, last year told Roberts it didn’t support that part of the transaction.

However, Roberts said the water issues in the Southwest are serious enough that such interstate deals likely will be needed in the future to meet the water needs of all regions.

Water banking in the region

The Colorado River Indian Tribes use their Colorado River water allotment to irrigate alfalfa and cotton fields on their land. The tribes are considering improving the efficiency of that irrigation and sharing some of their water with the rest of the state.(Photo: Michael Chow/The Republic)

Interstate water-banking deals might not be politically popular, but Arizona has a Water Banking Authority, created in 1996, that can and has facilitated such deals.

The AWBA can contract with California and Nevada to allow those states to pay to store some of their unused Colorado River water. The storage would replenish Arizona's aquifers. In the future, California or Nevada would be able to draw a similar quantity directly from the river. The AWBA began storing water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority in 2005.

In those cases, the water in the agreements belongs to Nevada and California. Arizona is acting as a banker conducting a transaction and, once the transaction is complete, the balance of each state's share of water stays the same.

Water planners at SRP, the Department of Water Resources and the Colorado River Indian Tribes still hope to develop a plan to get some of the tribes' water to metro Phoenix, without transferring any to California.

How that will happen is unclear, because SRP and tribal officials previously told other stakeholders that including California was critical to the financing of the overall plan, including repairs to the tribes' irrigation system.

The proposal for transferring water to California is complex. It involves purchasing water credits from Arizona's water bank and selling the credits to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. When California wanted to collect its credits, it would pull water from the river, because pulling the water out of the ground in central Arizona would be impractical.

California water officials were never approached regarding the plan as Arizona officials worked through the details, SRP and tribal officials said.

“We told them early on … any water that became available, any dealings with (the tribes), would need to stay in the state of Arizona for the benefit of Arizona water users.”

Thomas Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources

Water experts from CAP, upon learning of the plans, spent days analyzing them and designing a flow chart to illustrate the various transfers of water, water credits and cash.

CAP officials were shown the proposal in 2015 because their canal, which brings Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, would be needed to facilitate some portions of the deal. And CAP would be asked to “forebear” some of its river water to allow the Metropolitan Water District to withdraw the water instead.

CAP officials disliked the plan, according to emails obtained by The Republic.

“In organized crime, they refer to these types of arrangements as money laundering,” CAP Deputy General Manager Tom McCann wrote to his colleagues last year.

Thomas Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said he never supported the interstate transfer of water proposed by SRP and the tribes. But his department participated in working-group committees and held meetings with the tribes from 2015 to 2016 to discuss the plan.

“We told them early on … any water that became available, any dealings with (the tribes), would need to stay in the state of Arizona for the benefit of Arizona water users,” he said.

Buschatzke and the governor held a series of private meetings with water planners this summer that they described as taking a broad look at decades-old state and federal water policies.

Details of the tribes' water have been discussed at the meetings.

Patch said he is only interested in providing water for Arizona with the tribes' Arizona allotment, although there would be more economic opportunity for the tribes if they were able to make a deal in California.

“California pays more for water, we know that,” Patch said.

But he said discussions of a water transfer to California were prohibitively complex.

“When you talk about the wet water we are going to see and the paper water credits, everyone gets lost in that,” Patch said.

Helping tribal members

Patch takes his visitors across a levee and onto Deer Island, in the middle of the river.

“When I was little, it was a big, meandering river,” Patch said. He recalls large trees tumbling along in the water after they had been washed from the muddy banks as the river constantly changed its path.

Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairman Dennis Patch stands near the Colorado River in Parker. The tribes are looking for ways to lease some of their river-water allotment to thirsty parts of Arizona.(Photo: Michael Chow/The Republic)

But the federal government built levees that forced the river into a narrow, deep channel.

Now the tribes lease some of the land for expensive homes with personal docks, one of several business ventures they've undertaken.

Patch said tribal officials believe a water deal could replace the casino as the biggest revenue source for the tribes, providing much needed social services for the community.

Before the first tribal casino opened on the reservation in 1995, the annual tribal budget was about $1 million, he said. It’s closer to $41 million today, including contributions from the casino, CRIT Farms, land leased along the river for homes and vacation rentals, and the approximately one-third of commercial lots in Parker that the tribes own.

“We never thought we would have the problems we have now. And we never thought we would have the economic opportunity we have now. Now those two can meet.”

Tribal chairman Dennis Patch, on the Colorado River Indian Tribes

But the tribes still suffer from many of the same socioeconomic and drug problems faced by other Arizona tribes, Patch said.

“We never thought we would have the problems we have now,” he said. “And we never thought we would have the economic opportunity we have now. Now those two can meet.”

Despite the economic development, the tribes suffer from poverty rates greater than the state and county average, including about 40 percent of children on the reservation being raised in poverty, according to Census data.

Though most of the reservation is farmland, remnants of a difficult past are apparent on the landscape, including buildings made from brick and barracks used during World War II when Japanese internment camps were placed on the reservation.

Japanese-Americans were forced to make bricks, and the reservation still has a gym built from those bricks as well as several homes that repurposed the bricks when the internment camps were closed.

Patch’s father used one of the barracks structures for their family home, he said.

If the tribes can generate revenue from their water, they can pursue new economic opportunities, such as building a large cooler that would allow the tribes to plant and store more fragile vegetable crops, rather than alfalfa.

“This is something that will stabilize our economy for generations,” Patch said.

Patch said that after years of studying their irrigationsystem and more recently holding informational classes for tribal members to understand the issues, most tribal members are interested in making a deal with their water.

“I think the majority are listening to us,” Patch said. “I think there is enough trust in us.”

Patch said the tribes are not overly eager to make a deal with the state and can hold out for the right terms.

“If nothing happens for us, we still have all this land, our diversion right, and all this water,” he said.